


I'll Keep Finding, Finding You

by deandratb



Series: A Thousand Sweet Kisses [4]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, My First Work in This Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 11:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13340535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deandratb/pseuds/deandratb
Summary: Prompted kiss fic; mildly AU after S1.The way Regina gaped at her when she slammed her against the wall made her want to press her up against other walls, and wipe the confusion off her face.





	I'll Keep Finding, Finding You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [broken_hearted_bard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/broken_hearted_bard/gifts).



> Prompt: **"we might die tomorrow" kiss**

When Henry was dying. It started then.

It started even before that, Emma thinks. It may have started the first moment Regina sneered down at her in that inexplicably regal manner...but she refuses to admit that. It doesn’t say good things about her, how attractive she finds not just Regina-the-small-town-mayor but also the Evil Queen.

The way Regina gaped at her when she slammed her against the wall made her want to press her up against other walls, and wipe the confusion off her face. It was an impulse that shocked her, and it was certainly not the right time. But it was there, under the fury and the terror and the sudden understanding that sharpened her world to a single point--another kind of understanding, with implications just as life-changing.

And Regina was so lost, with everyone’s memories returned. Emma would be the first person to detail every single way that Regina’s choices were wrong and hurtful and dangerous, but she could also understand where she was coming from a little. They both had terrible childhoods, devoid of affection, and they both lost their first loves. Regina took her pain and made the absolute worst out of it, but it’s not like Emma didn’t get it.

It’s not as though she hadn’t wanted to burn the world down before.

Deep, deep down, she knew that she wasn’t as heroic as her son liked to think. It was that secret, hollow place, where she kept all of her worst memories and the bitterness of being abandoned and the years she lost of Henry’s childhood, that Emma thought Regina understood better than anyone else ever could.

Maybe that was why she was drawn to her, long before the rest of Storybrooke was willing to forgive. Maybe that was why she knocked on her door late one night, when Henry was with Snow and her parents thought she was working.

“What do you want?”

Regina’s tone held as much bluster and disdain as she could manage, but all Emma could hear was fatigue. Without her curse, laid bare for the kingdom to blame and mock and avoid, Regina was alone...and tired.

Emma shrugged. “Can I come in?”

Eyes narrowed, Regina stepped back a little, enough for Emma to enter. She had to brush past the former queen, whose very posture was a challenge. She might have lost the battle with the Savior, but she would never stop fighting.

Everyone, Emma thought with a roll of her eyes. Regina would fight everyone, just for the sake of her pride. Another trait she understood.

Regina shut the door behind her and crossed her arms, staring Emma down in the hall. “Well?”

“Got anything to drink?”

Baffled, Regina nodded. “I-I think there’s some wine, in the kitchen.”

Emma left her standing there, finding her own way to the kitchen. Regina watched her go, bewildered enough that it took her a minute to regain her composure and follow.

When she arrived--in **her** kitchen--Emma was hopping up onto the kitchen island, bottle in hand. She took a drink straight from the bottle, eyes on Regina, like she dared her to say something about it.

Regina couldn’t help the laugh that escaped. The absurdity of Emma Swan, there, in her empty house, drinking her wine without invitation--it was too much. “Bad day?”

“Not particularly.” As Regina approached, Emma held out the open bottle.

Nose wrinkled, Regina took it from her, but set it down. “Then what are you doing here?”

Emma shrugged again, her eyes flicking to Regina’s lips and back up. “I just needed a break. You know? A little quiet.”

“And this is the last place anybody’s likely to look for you,” Regina mused. “This is the last place anybody’s likely to come at all, these days.”

“There is that,” Emma agreed, reaching for the bottle again.

Regina grabbed it before she could, holding it out of reach.

“Hey!”

Her former majesty lifted an eyebrow, then lifted the wine, somehow managing to look dignified even as she swallowed Merlot out of the bottle.

She passed it over, brushing the back of her arm against her lips while Emma took another drink. Somehow, she suspected that Emma wasn’t going to give her a straight answer, no matter how many times she asked.

So Regina gave up trying to figure out what the town hero was doing in her mausoleum of a family-home-sans-family. She was still braced for some sort of attack...but it was also nice to have company.

Even if it was the self-righteous blonde who had singlehandedly ruined her life.

****

Regina didn’t return the surprise of Emma’s visit. It wasn’t an option, with Emma’s parents around and Henry so wary of her now.

If things were different, if she could have...she still wouldn’t have done so. It didn’t just take courage, Emma coming to her doorstep. It required a kind of vulnerability, of openness, that Regina simply couldn’t afford.

Though she doubted Emma thought of it that way, it was true.

But if that meant she expected to spend her days--and nights--alone, she couldn’t have been more wrong.

Because Emma came back.

Not often, of course, not frequently enough to make anyone suspicious. But return she did, the next time bringing a bottle of her own.

“Figured maybe you could use a little less quiet,” she offered with a raise of her eyebrows.

On their own terms, before anyone realized. That was how they became something that looked a bit like friends.

****

There was always another crisis. A dragon to face, a curse to break. A curse to cast.

As time passed, Emma wasn’t willing to risk the peace they’d fought for, sharing Henry’s affection...Regina’s struggle to be good. Someday, she promised herself, she would speak up. But not yet.

It was never the right time.

And then time ran out.

“There's something I haven't told you,” Regina said, as they stood at the town line and she prepared to pay the price. To finally fix it, and give Henry up.

Emma sighed. “What now?”

As Regina explained that they would lose their memories, that even she and Henry would be wiped clean, part of Emma just kept thinking, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. They never got their chance, to put words to the late night drinks and the heavy glances, to finally be more.

“But it won’t be real,” she argued, in the face of finally getting the life with Henry she always wanted. Happy endings were hard to trust, she still wasn’t used to them.

“Well, your past won't,” Regina agreed carefully. “But your future will.”

Please, she begged Emma with her eyes. I can give you this. I can make this right.

My future won’t have you in it, Emma thought, but she couldn’t say that out loud. If she even let herself think it for too long, she couldn’t bear it. Who cared that she wouldn’t know the difference, with a new reality?

Some part of her would ache, late at night while Henry slept and she drank alone. The part of her that belonged to Regina would know. Always.

This was what had to be done, and she wouldn’t fight Regina’s choice to undo what she did. It was fair, as much as it was terrible.

But they could go the rest of their lives now, never seeing each other again. Never knowing what might been.

Hell, they could die tomorrow. They’d never get another chance.

So she did the only thing she could.

The brave thing. The stuff of heroes.

“There’s something I haven’t told you, too,” Emma said, chin wobbling as she stepped away from Henry’s side, to Regina.

“What’s that?”

She didn’t use words; she was never that good with them anyway.

Emma kissed Regina like her life depended on it, like this could be their last day on Earth, like nothing else mattered.

Even knowing her parents and the rest of the town were watching, shocked--probably horrified--nothing else did matter. Not for that moment, not when Regina slid a warm hand up the back of her neck and kissed her back.

She knew, far too late and just in time, what Regina tasted like. The way she kissed with her eyes closed, dark lashes fluttering a little.

Emma knew, now that time was up, that she felt it too.

Regina pulled back and rested her forehead against Emma's, stealing one last moment for just the two of them. God, she’d been too scared to do something so simple. Why had she wasted so much time?

Right, she thought, as Emma stepped back and Regina caught Henry watching them from a few feet away. That was why.

Her son was more important than anything else. All she’d been trying to do for the last few years was to become worthy of him.

And maybe of Emma, a little bit, too.

There wasn’t time to explain the kiss to Henry. There wasn’t time to explain it to herself. Regina swallowed hard, locked her feelings down, and moved on.

She had a lot of people to save.

“Now, go,” she told Emma. “There isn't much time left.”

The way Henry squeezed back as Regina hugged him goodbye promised her that he was going to be fine. They would all be fine.

Without her.

Emma said a tearful goodbye to her own parents, then took Henry and drove off.

She couldn’t look back, but she left a little of her heart with Regina. Along with the warm, buzzing feeling where her lips had been, as Regina started to spin them a new reality.

“Be good to each other,” she whispered into the wind.

****

Finding themselves in Storybrooke once again was confusing and complicated. Regina was sure that some of the others blamed her--it turned out she would never be able to leave her past behind.

But when Emma and Henry arrived, she got her happy ending after all.

They all did.

As a family.

**Author's Note:**

> Title borrowed from "Finding You" by Kesha.


End file.
